Praise for Any Resemblance to Actual Persons
"Digression becomes an art form and an unexpected path to truth in this beautiful debut novel by Kevin Allardice. Any Resemblance to Actual Persons is a funny, sad, and profound book."–Matthew Sharpe, author of You Were Wrong
"Any Resemblance to Actual Persons is a master class in voice, and a comic novel of searing insight and intelligence. This is the book Thomas Bernhard might have written had he been raised in California on a diet of police procedurals and Raymond Chandler novels, and was a bit less grumpy." – Adam Wilson, author of Flatscreen
"A giddy and delirious romp through the back (bowling) alleys of memory, Any Resemblance to Actual Persons shows why history should always be written by the losers –– by those obsessive failed actors who either can't or won't untangle themselves from the cat's cradle of their own fictional constructions. If every life is, at bottom, a furious battle for authorship, then this hilarious first novel looks to be a winner by knock–out."—Robert Cohen, Amateur Barbarians
"Digression becomes an art form and an unexpected path to truth in this beautiful debut novel by Kevin Allardice. Any Resemblance to Actual Persons is a funny, sad, and profound book." –Matthew Sharpe, author of You Were Wrong
"A community college professor and aspiring writer becomes obsessed with disproving his sister's claim that their father was responsible for the notorious Black Dahlia murder…A humorous, well–written account of the damaging consequences of an intellectual obsession."—Kirkus
"What a whip smart and original novel. Steeped in the legacy of the Black Dahlia case, we watch Paul McWeeney conduct an investigation into his Hollywood past, but what we really get is a hilarious and endlessly absorbing portrait of obsession. I didn't want it to end." —Emma Rathbone, author of The Patterns of Paper Monsters
"With technical bravura, anarchic wit, and deep cultural insight, Any Resemblance to Actual Persons somehow sneaks a highly personal story into the near–mythic world of the Black Dahlia case. Allardice gets all the details right, from the scarily plausible explanation of the crime to the dark shadows of literary obsession and familial dysfunction to the outsize absurdities of fleeting fame. Postmodern noir, burlesque comedy, and prose that surprises on every page—this is one impressive performance."—Will Boast, author of Masters of Change
"Any Resemblance To Actual Persons is a master class in voice, and a comic novel of searing insight and intelligence. This is the book Thomas Bernhard might have written had he been raised in California on a diet of police procedurals and Raymond Chandler novels, and was a bit less grumpy." —Adam WIlson, author of Flatscreen
"With technical bravura, anarchic wit, and deep cultural insight, Any Resemblance to Actual Persons somehow sneaks a highly personal story into the near–mythic world of the Black Dahlia case. Allardice gets all the details right, from the scarily plausible explanation of the crime to the dark shadows of literary obsession and familial dysfunction to the outsize absurdities of fleeting fame. Postmodern noir, burlesque comedy, and prose that surprises on every page—this is one impressive performance." —Will Boast, author of Power Ballads
"Mix Nabokov's Pale Fire with James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia, and the result is a crime novel in a centrifuge, or a salad spinner at the very least. Kevin Allardice's Any Resemblance to Actual Persons is emphatically not about the usual winnowing of clues until a solution is found, but the opposite: the multiplication of motives and misinterpretations. It's a comic novel for sure, but in the end the joke is closer to the miasma of real life than we might care to admit, and I'm fairly sure, on us." —Jim Krusoe, author of Parsifal
"Kevin Allardice's novel is a meticulously distorted and hilarious drama of self–delusion. Funny, sad, insightful—and a killer prose style, too." —Sara Levine, author of Treasure Island!!!
Allardice’s debut novel has an unusual conceit: in 1996, a New York publisher is preparing to release Edith McWeeney’s The Dahlia Dossier: Hollywood’s Most Notorious Killer Revealed, in which the author attempts to prove that her father, George McWeeney, was the murderer in the notorious unsolved 1947 Black Dahlia case. Paul McWeeney, Edith’s brother, writes a long letter to the publisher (which forms the novel’s text) refuting that claim. A teacher at a junior college in L.A. and aspiring writer, he identifies with and even idealizes his late father. As his protest letter takes on its own life, we witness Paul’s own delusional world and self-destructive obsessions. Alas, he can be a pedantic bore. Allardice does a great job, however, of satirizing some key players of today’s Black Dahlia mythos—John Gilmore, Steve Hodel, and especially James Ellroy. This is not, finally, about the case so much as it is about the fragility of memory and one man’s reckoning with failure and dissolution. Agent: Nathaniel Jacks, Inkwell Management. (Sept.)
A community college professor and aspiring writer becomes obsessed with disproving his sister's claim that their father was responsible for the notorious Black Dahlia murder. In his debut novel, Allardice introduces failed novelist Paul McWeeney and his journey into a maddening obsession with discrediting the claims made in his sister's published book. Written in the form of a letter to his sister's publisher and in a stream-of-consciousness style (which includes nods to Marcel Proust and Hunter S. Thompson), McWeeney threatens legal action to prevent the publication of a book that claims his father killed Elizabeth "Betty" Short (aka the Black Dahlia) during a failed medical procedure. What starts as a seemingly succinct letter quickly becomes a running commentary on McWeeney's maniacal voyage into the creation of memories; reflections about his lack of teaching abilities, unusual family and intimate relationships; and his slipping grip on reality as he falls deeper into isolation. At the center of the story is how McWeeney and his sister, Edie, offer differing recollections of their deceased parents (a mother who leaves the family for a life in Africa and a father who wrote for a Dragnet-esque television show). The irreconcilable gap between the conflicting narratives becomes a central ingredient for McWeeney's self-destruction and marginalization. The most enjoyable portions of this book are McWeeney's constant diatribes, bursting with academic jargon, analysis to the point of absurdity and a strict policy of discounting any notion that strays from his view of a given topic. A humorous, well-written account of the damaging consequences of an intellectual obsession.
